Gary Neville Interview

Gary Neville: United in my veins
By LEE CLAYTON

'Gary Neville, he's a red, he's a red, he's a red... 'Gary Neville, he's a red... 'He hates Scousers.'

The Manchester United supporters love Gary Neville. And not just because he hates Scousers. He is the ferociously competetive shop steward of a right back who has become the leader of a team hoping to win back the title from Chelsea. It would be his first title as captain.

And here, in a remarkable insight into his love and passion for Manchester United, Neville looks back on the joys of his career and reveals what it takes to become a cult hero at Old Trafford.

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'United, Liverpool. Barcelona, Real Madrid, Juventus and Milan... they are the clubs with real tradition, history and power. Others may try but nobody else breaks into that and they never will.'

When I stop playing, I’d love just to travel round Europe watching United with my mates. What’s better than watching your team play football and having a few drinks and something to eat after? Criticising them if they lose, jumping around hysterically if they win.

I saw men screaming, with the veins coming out of their neck, on Deansgate the day after we won the European Cup. Nothing in their life made them do that before, nothing in their life made them do it since. You can spend 30 quid on nothing these days, on absolute rubbish. Or you can get the buzz of your life out of watching United.

I always tell the young players here, if you look down at your shirt and see a Manchester United badge, you’re not having a bad day. You’re doing all right. The day I don’t have the United badge on my chest will be a sad one for me. I don’t think I can ever have the same feeling playing for another football club. That is no criticism of anyone else, but I am so ingrained in United and it is such a big part of my life.

I’m not naive enough to think there is only Man United. Barcelona, Real Madrid, Juventus, Milan and Bayern Munich have more than got enough right to suggest they’re at the very top of the game, with United and Liverpool. Those clubs are the ones with the real tradition and history and power. They have the immense following. Others can try, but nobody breaks into that.

And they never will.

The biggest clubs can have bad seasons, bad decades even, but they will never be abandoned or forgotten. That might be seen as me having a go at others, but it’s the reality. I know because I’ve seen United climb back up from the depths. I didn’t grow up watching United win championships, but that didn’t stop me loving the club or feeling it.

I always say this to the fans when they talk about who owns the club or who the directors are or who the chairman is: when you first walked into that ground at the age of five or 10, you didn’t walk up the steps from the refreshment bar and think, who’s that sat over there in the directors’ box? You fell in love with that team running out in that red shirt, in that great ground, on that green pitch. That was what drew you to the club and made you think, wow, that’s got me. And it’s an addiction you have for life.

Managers are important, so are directors and players, but we all come and go. It was walking into the stadium, that’s what gripped me, the size of it – I was in awe of the whole place. I just love everything; the badge, the history.

You can fall in love with a player but, deep down, you know he’ll leave one day. That’s why I always say that the people within the club are just there to serve it. It’s the club and the badge that matters so much. The players are just adding their little bit to a massive depth of history.


'Medals are great, but the real miracle is that I shared a dressing room with six of my best mates and my brother for more than 10 years.'

You will find a few people around United, influential ones, who weren’t sure I would make 50 games, never mind 500. I spent most of my teenage years waiting for rejection. I still remember my shock at being one of the 16 picked out of 200 kids in the under-11s. That letter through the post was the most unbelievable thing I had ever seen.

I still wonder why I was invited back every year, and it can only have been attitude. If training started at 5pm, I would be there at 4.15, passing against a wall. I knew I had to do that when I saw the skills of local lads like Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt at 13. Then the out-of-town kids joined us, like David Beckham, Keith Gillespie and Robbie Savage. I was a central midfield player and I thought, ‘I’m not as good as this lot, nowhere near’.

People assume that a career in football falls into your lap, that you were always going to play for Manchester United. They don’t see the challenges you have to overcome and they forget the dozens of players who never quite make it.

If you aren’t the most talented player in the world, you have to sprint to keep up. You have to make sacrifices. When I left school at 16, I made the conscious decision that I would cut myself off from all of my mates. It sounds brutal, and it was selfish, but I knew that they would be doing all sorts of teenage things that I couldn’t get involved with, even if that was just having a few drinks.

I’ll always remember my dad telling me: ‘You’ve got two years to give it a real go. Never look back and wish you’d done more.’ Medals are great, but the real miracle is that I shared a dressing room with six of my best mates and my brother for more than 10 years. It sounds like a cliché, but I’ve been living a childhood dream.

There are times when I could have played better, games when I might have made fewer mistakes, but one thing I would like to say for myself is that, from the age of 16 to 31, I’ve given everything. Your best is the least you should give, but we’ve all seen players who have fallen short because they haven’t applied themselves. Players with much more talent than me. And if I ever thought I’d cracked it, that would probably be the end of me.


'Schmeichel used to hammer me, Bruce ripped me to shreds, some of the first team were animals, they were so aggressive and so demanding. It was brutal. Now foreigners don't expect to be shouted and screamed at...football is becoming softer.'

It will go down as a legendary youth side (1992), and that’s not me bragging. It has to when you look at Ryan Giggs captaining Wales, David Beckham captaining England, me winning 80-odd caps, Paul Scholes becoming one of the very best United players, Nicky Butt winning six championship titles, and the same with my brother, Phil.

It was a freak that will still be talked about in 50 years, and not just because of the six of us, but because of all the others who have gone on and are still playing or working in football. Robbie Savage and Keith Gillespie have been Premiership players, internationals.

We were brought up in a hard school. Our youth coach, Eric Harrison, was tough with us, the manager was tough with us and then, when you got close to the first team, you had to deal with Mark Hughes, Eric Cantona, Roy Keane and Paul Ince. You couldn’t be a wimp with those lads.

I’ve always said that they saw us as a threat to them as a winning group. Those players had already won medals and they were thinking, is this bunch of kids going to keep me in championships?

Peter Schmeichel used to hammer me. We would be practising and he would just pluck my crosses out of the air as if to say: ‘You’re not good enough.’ It was only three or four years later that he came up to me on a team day out and said: ‘You’ve proved me wrong.’ That is the education that people don’t see.

I still remember Steve Bruce ripping me to shreds at Elland Road, Mark Hughes charging at me just because I hadn’t played the ball into the channel, Eric Cantona giving me the stare, Keaney and Incey snarling. And that was before you had to face the manager. It was a hard school, but the best education imaginable.

It was all about the levels, the standards that you have to produce, and they were incredibly driven. They were animals, some of them. To be honest, you could say that they weren’t nice people to play with at times. They were so demanding, so aggressive. You lived or died by it, but we came through it.

They were brutal at times, some of them, and it is getting harder and harder to be like that now. Generally, you’re talking about a more sensitive player now, a more technically gifted player.

Foreign players don’t expect to be shouted and screamed at. Football is becoming softer.


'I was playing for England and earning £210-a-week, now money has created a distance between the working class and football, but I can't stand it when a fan says "I paid your wages"'

I came into football at the right time, in the sense that the money has catapulted. I’m not going to apologise for that, but it wasn’t why I came into the game in the first place. I signed a contract at 16 which promised me £29.50 a week for two years, so I didn’t come into this for the money. I came here because I loved playing football and playing for United.

At 18 I got £210 a week and I was playing for England. In fact, I was playing for England for £230 a week, because it went up 20 pounds a year. Because it went up to £1,000 a week after that, it didn’t make me a different person, and am I going to turn it down when the club increases it to £5,000?

You can’t tell me that the players of the 60s weren’t earning a lot more than the plumbers or the electricians so, while I appreciate that football has given me a great lifestyle, I don’t think I should apologise for that. But I do accept that, combined with the media coverage and the superstardom of players, the money can create a distance between the working class and a working-class player.

You can see that sometimes when you hear a fan say: ‘I paid this or that, I paid your wages.’ I can’t stand that, to be honest. My dad would never say that when he was taking us to watch United.

Of course we appreciate what the fans spend to watch the club, but I honestly believe you get your money’s worth when you consider the rewards you get. You could spend the same on 10 beers or a family night out at the cinema, and I can’t believe you’ll get the feelings that come from watching United.

If you were watching in the ’99 season, whatever you spent following us around, believe me, you were still well in credit. You have memories that will last you a lifetime. It has given you feelings that made you shiver.

People talk about the crowds changing, especially at United, and maybe it has, but there are still those moments when it is incredibly raw. And you can still sense that passion when you go to the pubs in Salford and you see the MUFC tattoos on the knuckles. This club can enthrall you. That’s what Manchester United does, it grips you and gets you if you really want it.


'No, I don't think another team will ever win the treble... and I say that as part of of a team that hopes to do it again'

The ’94 team is always mentioned as being one of the best United teams, certainly the most powerful, but I think the manager realised in 1995 that it was never going to win the European Cup. They were obviously ageing and they were set in the British way, very powerful.

He needed to bring in a more fluent type of football with elements of the ’94 team still in place, like Keane and Schmeichel. He then brought in the younger players, a couple of foreign ones and then David May, Andy Cole and Dwight Yorke, and we went through our European education.

No, I don’t think there will be another treble winning team and if there is, good luck to the team that does it because they will have one hell of a time.

I’m saying that as part of a team that hopes to do it again, but also as somebody who knows what it takes. And everything has to go like you wouldn’t believe. You have to win game after game in the last minute.

Everyone remembers the celebrated matches that season – the European semi-final in Turin, the FA Cup semi at Villa Park and the European Cup final itself – but they forget that there were others like against Liverpool in the fourth round of the FA Cup.

We were one goal down with five minutes to go and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer ends up scoring the winner in the last seconds. So many things have to go well. If Dennis Bergkamp scores a penalty against us in the FA Cup semi, Arsenal probably win the Double. But we came away from Villa Park that night thinking something might be happening, and then we knew nothing was going to stop us once we won in Turin.

Even at 2-0 down to Juventus, I remember Becks coming over and saying: ‘C’mon, we can do this,’ and he’s not really the type for that.

To have belief even in that situation was incredible, because the defence had endured a 20-minute nightmare. I was caught out for one goal, losing Inzaghi, and Jaap Stam was being run ragged down that side. Ronny Johnsen was all over the place. We were playing very poorly but we were a decent bunch of lads who managed to pull off a freak. The Treble will be a freak. I just can’t see it being repeated.